On a glorious hot and sunny day today, we went to the Staple Fitzpaine church fete. This village is approx. 3 miles from us and we often pass through it on the way to Taunton. The village fete was being held in the manor house,

a lovely old house with a beautiful lake in the back garden.

There were lots of stalls, the cake stall, the bottle tombola (Neil and I both won something), the coconut shy (Neil got a coconut first try), the book stall, skittles, bric a brac and ladies hats to name but a few, as well as the prerequisite burger stand and ice cream seller.

The Wellington Silver Band were seated in the shade of a large tree and were playing when we went in. It was lovely to hear them and we stopped a while in the shade.

Later in the afternoon Punch and Judy were appearing and a dog show was taking place in the field, with afternoon tea being served in the walled garden. How nice it would be to own a pile like that, and a wonderful setting for the Summer Church fete which is only held every 3 years.

Yesterday was the Christmas bazaar held in Buckland St Mary village hall. For the third year running Neil and I were on the Bric-a-brac stall. When we arrived in the morning to set up there was already loads of “Stuff” in boxes on our table for us to sort out. In fact we had heaps of stuff and wondered how we were going to sell it all.

The bazaar was opened by Father Christmas at 2.15pm.

He has “Mother Christmas” there to help him sort our which little kiddie is going in to see him next!!

We had a great assortment of things on our stall:- mugs and coasters, gloves, bags, plates, pictures, jewellery, books, draw liners etc to name but a few.

The funniest thing was someone had knitted some mittens and donated them, but they were both the left hand!! May be someone else is wandering around with 2 right hand ones.

In spite of the heavy pouring rain the bazaar was well attended. There were raffles and cream teas, a bottle tombola and the brownies were wandering around with “name the reindeer” so lots to raise money from. We made £68.50 on our stall, just better than last year.

Busy Xmas Bazaar

The only down side to running the bric-a-brac stall is that you have to clear up whats left afterwards. We boxed everything up and are going to take it all into Chard to the Ferne Animal Sanctuary Charity Shop tomorrow.

This was the first of various activities to look forward to in Buckland St Mary in the run up to Xmas.